| Ernest Hemingway's colorful life as big game hunter, fisherman, and Nobel Prize winner began in quiet Oak Park, Illinois, July 21, 1899. Ernest was the second of six children born to Dr. and Mrs. Clarence E. Hemingway. His mother, a devout, religious woman with considerable musical talent, hoped that Ernest would develop an interest in music but Ernest was a disappointment. He acquired his father's enthusiasms a love of hunting and fishing in the north Michigan woods and it is that phase of his childhood which formed important impressions and is reflected later in such Nick Adams stories as "Indian Camp" and "Big Two-Hearted River." |
| In high school Hemingway played football and also boxed and it was the latter which was responsible for a permanent eye injury that caused the army to reject his efforts to enlist in World War I. Boxing, however, proved finally to be an asset to Hemingway, for it gave him a lasting enthusiasm for prize fighting, material for stories, and a tendency to talk of his literary accomplishments in boxing terms. |
| Hemingway's writing career began early; he edited the high school newspaper and, after graduation, got a job as reporter on the Kansas City Star, after he was turned down by the Kansas City draft boards. Hemingway's sights, however, were still set on Europe and he was at last successful in his attempts to serve the war effort: he joined a volunteer American Red Cross ambulance unit as driver. Shortly thereafter, Hemingway was seriously wounded at Fossalta on the Italian Piave and he recalls that life slid from him, "like you'd pull a silk handkerchief out of a pocket by a corner," almost fluttered away, then returned. It is thought by some literary critics that it was this experience which gave Hemingway an obsession with his own fear and the need to test his courage throughout the rest of his life. |
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